Dr. Vergin, to the members of the Wayzata Public Schools Board. All right. All right. Nice to meet you. Good to see you again. Good to see you again. Good to meet you. Good to see you again. See you again. Thanks for having me back. Tomorrow, well then good to see you then. Thanks for having us. All right. See you. Are you ready? Okay. Good morning, Dr. Vergin, and welcome to Wayzata Public Schools. Thank you for meeting with us about becoming our next Superintendent. Today, our school board members will rotate asking you questions, and we will all be taking notes. Please know we are listening carefully and do not intend to be disrespectful. We have provided a copy of the questions for you. There are 14 questions, and our last question will be whether you have any questions for us. The interview is scheduled for 1 hour 45 minutes, and MSBA uh Barbara Don, sitting to my right, will notify us when there is 1 hour remaining, then 30 minutes, and the final 15 minutes remaining in our allotted time. Please be aware of these time constraints and plan the length of your answers accordingly. I'd like to open the interview by asking each board member to introduce themselves. I will start with Alicia. I'm Alicia Little, and I think we're saying how long we've been here. I am just shy of 2 months of being on this board. All right. All right. Looks like I'm next. Dan Schnestra, 2 years. Sheila Prior, I just started my fourth year. Dr. Milind Sohoni, in my fifth year, and I'm the chair on the board this year. Heidi Kater, this is my fifth year, and I'm treasurer of the board this year. Valentina Ears, this is my third year. Paras Bendre, this is my third year. Thank you, board colleagues. Now, we will begin with our first question. Dr. Vergin, presentation, you have been asked to prepare a presentation with a 15-minute time limit to share your proposed transition plan with our board. The floor is now yours. Please go ahead. Thank you, Dr. Sohoni. Thank members of the board. It's wonderful to be with you today. I had a delightful day yesterday in the district being able to see four different schools and see the new DSC and be able to connect with several different people across the district, and it was an energizing day. You'd think at the end of a day like that, you'd be a little bit fatigued, but it took a while for that to sink in. I was I left pretty energized about the work that's that's going on here. You should be really proud. I'm sure you are, but there is so much good happening in your schools and for kids and families across. So, that is a reflection of your leadership and the great care that has been here. So, I'm excited to to be here and to have a chance to present to you a transition plan. I also want you to know that there's a whole lot of intentionality that brings me to this role. Every single professional move that I have made has been for this moment to be ready to be your next superintendent. And [snorts] we'll walk through that in our different answers today and our different questions, and I look forward to being able to to dive in deep. I'm glad you added a little time to the interview, because I do want the depth for you to be able to get to know me and to know the full me. I come to you with full transparency. I come to you with full commitment, and I come to you for the long run. And I want you to This is a huge decision for the community, and I want you to know absolutely everything you can about me, because I know I'm the right fit and this is the right time for Wayzata Public Schools. So, the transition plan that I'll present here, you've been provided I provided over a week ago in my candidate packet a series of tactics that I would do that are chunked into the first 30 days, first 60 days, and first 90 days. Provided that over a week ago. I'm going to touch on that briefly, but what I chose to spend our day our time with today is less about the tactics and more about how it's going to feel to be led by me, and more about how the strategies that are going to endure. This is not a short-term play for me. This is a long-term investment. I am a distance runner, not a great one, but I am a distance runner, and I know that if you want to go 10 miles, 20 miles, you make different decisions in that first mile and second mile that your future self is going to thank you for. That's been my track record. That's what I'll bring here, and this is a transition plan that's built to last. So, I'll give you the tactics. You already have those a copy of those, and you'll I'll I'll touch on some of those, but it's more built on the strategies that will endure. Tactics come and go. Strategies endure, and I want you to know what it's going to feel like for us to lead together. It's all built on three areas of connection, clarity, and care for sustained excellence for each and every student. These are how I show up. These will be unique to the Wayzata context, but these are the ways I've shown up that have helped me through other high-profile transitions, and they really become part of my being. That connection is about trust building. That clarity is kind, right? We need to know where we're going as an organization, and deep care for each and every person in this great organization. That's what you'll see. Those are the conditions of excellence. So, how I'll set this up is I will describe what I mean by each of those three strategies, why they're important, and then I'll give you a handful of examples of what those look like, so you know exactly what that'll look like kind of in that first 90-day time horizon. Two quick notes about this. This This is a draft. This is something that through thoughtful listening and partnership will evolve to become our leadership advancement plan. True success is a team endeavor, and nothing is done alone. It doesn't mean I don't take full responsibility for the transition plan, and we will collectively own this, and it will be informed by what I learn as I as I dive into the system even further. The other note is that it starts tomorrow. There is too much good work, and this is too important for for everything to be waiting till July 1st. I will get to work on this tomorrow after hopefully a deliberation tonight, and I will work in partnership with you and with Dr. Anderson to maximize the pre-transition window, while ensuring people have the clarity to finish the school year successfully. That'll be job one, of course, is making sure students and staff have the what they need to finish the school year, not to cause confusion, not to get in the way of role clarity, but in the background, I'll be working with you and Dr. Anderson to be fully up to speed and ready come July 1. Now, it's been 18 years since Dr. Anderson made a transition, but he made pretty much the exact same transition, and I am we have a over a decade trusted relationship, and even though it's been a while since he's made this transition, I I know he'll be a trusted partner in this, and he and I are colleagues that consult really continuously, and I would look forward to partnering with him on this. So, connection. Three parts of connection. Presence and relationships is the first. I know what it's like to be present in the Wayzata community. I know what people expect in a one high school system. I know what people expect in the West Metro. Not only do I know it, I choose it. This is where I love to be. This is This is where I get energy. I'm going to take a second to define trust in presence and relationships here, because I think all of our work, the eight of us, as well as all the work that we do with our community, is built on trust. I've been sure that every administrator in my current district is trained in this framework, not so that we can tell people exactly and, you know, go through a like a memorization test or something like that, but so that trust isn't left up to chance. It's too important, but that we have a specific strategy for how we build trust. There's four ways that I define it. The first is sincerity. Do you feel like you're getting a sincere version of me? I'm confident that as you get to know me, you will get a consistent version. You won't get one Rob in some crowds, one Rob in another crowd. You will have a consistent version of me. The second is reliability. That what we say we're going to do, we follow through on. I'm highly visible. I have very specific strategies for following through on things after being visible, so much so that I am able to get to second conversations with folks, second relationships with people, cuz I think there's nothing more frustrating to community members than when they meet the leader and then they meet him again, and it's as if they're having the same conversation again. And so, the communities I serve, I think they think I have a photographic memory. I don't. I have a phone where I take a ton of notes when I leave any meeting, and I make sure to follow up. That's handwritten notes. That's remembering people's names. That's asking about their kids. That's all trust building. Third element is care. Deep and sincere care for every child and every staff member and every parent in our community. Really every community member. That you feel that, that that's intentional, that's not just a feeling, but that you can feel it, and that there's strategy that sets us up for short and long-term success. I'm a strategic leader. Like I said, I didn't just happen into this room because it happens to be the job that's available right now. This was a series of 20 years of intentionality and education and networks and in work experience and the care that that allows me to bring and to have strategy to have great care for this wonderful organization builds trust. And the fourth is competence. Is do people know that you have the skills and resources and energy to do the job? So, through sincerity, care, reliability, and competence, I build trust. Took some extra time there because really every single piece that we touch on today, that's something we need to be asking. Is can we trust what this person's saying? Can And I know that's how people assess and that really is assess our relationships and I know that's really what allows our work to go forward. Our community's trusting us with 13,000, eventually 15,000 of their most important things in their lives. And they need to know that they can trust us. And so, that's why it's important that we take that through. Second piece of connection is listening. We need to listen to understand and not to respond. We don't talk across each other and we show up to listen to really understand the values of our great district. And partnership. Partnership's beyond relationships. A partnership is how do we truly partner together to create something that isn't possible on our own. So, how this will look in our first 30-60-90 days, some specific things is we'll have individual meetings. Each of you and I will meet. I will >> [clears throat] >> request that we get to know each other's stories before we get too far into business. I want to know how you how you think, I want to know what brought you to the board, what's working for you, but I also want to know your personal stories. And I want to let you in into mine because of our our ongoing relationship. I'll visit every school and department so staff feel known, valued, and needed. I have structured listening sessions. This is a strategy I've done in every single role that allow people to come in in dynamic ways. What I know, I'm a working parent in a Lake Conference community. I know what it's like to get one-way communication. I know what it's like to have only one option to show up and it just doesn't work. So, we have different opportunities, whether that's coffees, whether that's large group stuff, that's virtual, whole different series that I work with Amy and team on to make sure that we have a strategic engagement plan. Visible presence I've touched on, strengthening partnerships, and intentional onboarding of new leaders. We've three new principals to hire. My experience as a principal, my experience in teaching in the University of Minnesota's principal licensure program is going to be critical. I've hired new principals in the last handful of years, I've onboarded new principals, and I've helped principals go to be on to new roles in district leadership. That will be something that we can't leave up to chance, and I know that I want to have a direct role in along with the team. Second piece is clarity. You have to forgive me here throughout the day. Um I've been battling something for a week. I'm feeling feeling better today, but I might need a pause at time or two for some water. Clarity is the difference between good school districts and great school districts. I will give you everything you need to govern with confidence. You will have the options, you'll have the background data, you'll have the trade-offs, the second, third order, downstream impacts, what high-performing schools in Minnesota have done in this context, what high-performing schools that benchmark similar to us across the country have done in this, and you will have everything you could feel to govern with confidence. That allows us to focus on priorities. In ambitious districts, there's a lot of temptation to chase everything because we are good at a lot of stuff. But if everything's important, nothing's important. So, we've got to have some discipline to focus on our priorities. Aligned execution is a piece where I think is is maybe the most important of this. Execution needs to happen by design. I believe in innovation and I've had a lot of success growing nationally prominent programs in both of my last two districts, and innovation means nothing without execution. You need to have precise execution, and execution doesn't happen by chance, and it doesn't happen by it being someone else's job. We need to have clear structures for where decisions made. How is accountability being communicated to the board and to the community? Communities are making great investments in us. They're going to make a huge investment in us on April 14th, and that's going to give us an amazing future. And they need to know how we're communicating our execution and how how how that's working and what our accountability structures look like. Initiatives often don't fail because leaders lack commitment or because we lack resources. In districts like this, those usually aren't the That's usually not the case. It's usually because we have structural in clarity. We have too many things going on, we don't know what the rhythm is for reporting, we don't know what success looks like, we don't have lead indicators that get us ahead of what that is or what success is. We've waited till the the postmortem till things have already been done, and we don't have really good structural clarity. So, that is something we'll invest in over time. And then ultimately, student achievement and continuous improvement. The verb of our district is learning. We are here for students to learn. There's a whole lot of other things that need to happen for that, but we can't lose sight of our job is to help students learn and be ready whenever they leave us to whatever it is they want to do. So, clarity in action is a careful review of the strategic roadmap, board policies, and superintendent goals to ensure alignment across instructional and operational efforts. Are the things that I'm saying are important to you at the board table showing up in our classroom? In some ways, it's that simple. What's happening at the point of exchange? There's a whole lot that happens in district offices and boardrooms, and what happens in our classroom is the most important thing in the district. Is there alignment between what we're doing and what's happening in the classroom? Provide the board with regular entry plan updates. You will never have to unders- have to wonder about where things are. I have provided continuous updates, and I have a system for that. We'll work together on what works for you and what you want the cadence to be. I have some things that have worked for me, but I'll be curious what works for you so that you can have what you need, but you will have consistent updates on that. We'll make sure our board plan and meeting agendas align to these priorities. Through our one-on-one conversations, we can get to know each other and push each other's thinking so that our board meetings can remain strategic, productive, and aligned to our priorities. Our community expects us to improve student learning, and we need to have the tools and resources to be able to do that. Clarify decision-making protocols, norms, and follow-through behaviors. Nothing can get more frustrating than when people don't know whose decision it is and how it's going to be accounted for. People need to know where that is, and we'll have clear pieces for that. And then provide regular, accessible reports on student and learning. As a board, you will be very close to the learning. I keep boards very close to the learning in the classroom. So, when you're in the community and you're wondering about and you get asked questions about performance or about instructional practices, you will have what you need to be able to respond with confidence and to be able to govern with clarity. These three pieces, this part kind of shows the interdependence of connection, clarity, and action and care. So, if you have connection, if you have connection without clarity, it just kind of leads to friendly relationships and just kind of drift. But if you have clarity without care, you kind of got and clarity and execution without care, you can lead to kind of burn out and lack of trust. Like people need to even if things are getting done, but there isn't care, there's a problem there's a problem there. And then if you have clarity without execution, you just get frustration. So, there's really an interdependence across all three of these pieces. And I'll bring us home with care. We are stewards of an amazing opportunity here, and we need to show our community, and what you will feel from me is an honor and a protection of what is working. Excellent systems can be really harmed when you don't unders- when you make changes before you know context. The expectations and the performance of a school district like Wayzata is vastly different than most schools in the country. It's just an entirely different level of performance, an entirely different level of engagement, an entirely different level of expectation. I I need to to tell you that. And job one for me as your superintendent will be to honor and protect what's working. We have to have a clear protection of this is what's getting us good results and how do we make sure that that's not disrupted. At the same time, we need to have some long-term stewardship and studying of how things can you get even better. So, it's the discipline to protect what's working. And honestly, in Minnetonka and Eden Prairie, I talk about the humility to say we could do better. Our communities expect us for everything to be perfect all the time sometimes and we've have to have the humility to say there kids in our systems that aren't being served right now. And so, we can do a little bit better. And we can keep the community whole at the same time. There's no blame and shame in that. There's no um disparaging in that. We're good people doing hard work and we're going to move forward and a continuous improvement journey. That's why we work here. Uh that's why we work in these systems. The leaders in place like Wayzata uh are a different caliber than other places. And the teachers and the staff members, there is a high expectation and a high level of professionalism. And we work here because uh we want we thrive on those expectations. Um good enough isn't. Um checking boxes isn't. That's not even part of the vocabulary. Uh so, we need to be able to have the discipline to protect what's good um and working as well as the humility and probably the courage to say, "Where can we do better? What else can we do?" And stay on that and stay on that journey while keeping the community whole so that we have that deep respect for for our community. What care looks like in act action is making sure that our strategic initiatives are mapped our strategic directions are mapped to ensure system coherence and pacing. I mentioned earlier, if you have execution without care, you can lead to frustration and distrust. And I mentioned earlier about the long haul. There has to be a real clear plan for pacing and coherence. There's a steadiness to my leadership that you will feel that it's each day there's a step. Each day there's a step. And when you look back at that, you think, "Wow, we got that program launched. We started that with one class. How did that happen? Wow, we have a whole K-12 inspired journey framework now. We started that with one elementary school. And now we have every student in the in the system experiencing a approach to learning rooted in discovery, exploration, and pursuit. That's a current example because of a steadiness of the coherence and pacing. Careful review of budget structures. We need to be stewards of our resources. Look at our um what capital purchases we have or vendor contracts, other financial obligations so that we always have fiscal readiness. That is ongoing work and we have a get to touch on that later. I'm glad we get to do that uh because that's another part that I think is an always behavior and there's a steadiness to that. It's not just in budget cycles, but we need to be working on that always. Protect the classroom experience and program quality as as financial decisions are made uh so that our students always have the greatest experience that we can provide. And then share a state of the district learning report so that you know where my values are, where my observations are, and uh strengths, opportunities, and questions. And that in the past has given me a chance to engage in dialogue about that. That those strengths, opportunities, and questions aren't going to be presented to you as finite. They'll be presented as jumping-off points for us to have a a dialogue about our assessment of each of those. The results you can count on from this that I've delivered in the past and will deliver here is durable and strong trust. Clear direction and alignment, operational discipline and stewardship, stable and focused progress, and world-class learning. Those are the results of this transition plan. You will again, we can go deeper into and I could take questions on that if you'd like of all the different bullet points of the different meetings I'll show up in, the different reports, the budgets I'll review, the policies. All that's there. I know that work cover to cover. Uh I have no qualms about that. 100% confidence. But tactics fade, strategies endure. And the strategy of connection, clarity, and care is something we will feel on day 91 through year 20. You will have sustained excellence for each and every student and stability for our community. Hey. >> [laughter] >> Year 20, I like Perfect timing. Yeah, it'd be great. Thank you, Amy. All right. All right, I got it. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to do that. Thank you for your presentation. Wayzata Public Schools as a community has not had to experience a change in the superintendent position in decades. This will be a big change for our families and staff. How do you lead through change? Well, connection, clarity, and care. Uh those are the hallmarks. So, when I talk about day 91 through year 20 is you shouldn't get a version of me through a transition and then well, okay, now here's the here's the new leader. It's this is who you're going to get. You're going to feel that from me today across uh these questions that I'm excited to talk with you about and you're going to feel that in all of our time together. Those are uh conditions for excellence. Those are conditions that create excellent outcomes for us. Two specific changes that I can just give you um a little bit more spec- specificity to that question of how do you lead through change? So, last year I'm led um an academic visioning process called Flight Plan 2035 to set an ambitious 10-year community community process to set a 10-year academic vision for our current district and what will the what what do we want the student experience to be over the next 10 years? And as I lead the implementation of that this summer and was planning for that, I looked at what was being called upon by our community and had pause uh because what was being asked for was vague enough and ambitious enough that I realized the traditional the leadership approach the leadership development approaches we've taken aren't going to be able to implement what our community is calling us to do. The days of being able to sort of I mean by that is it wasn't like, "Okay, community is calling for authentic learning, real-world learning, partnerships, um intentional purposeful use of technology, integrated outdoor time." It Those are some examples. It wasn't going to be a leadership development where I could just say, "All right, let's book a room in the summer. We'll have a half-day training and everybody will be ready to lead this work." It's a lot more adaptive than that uh and a lot more uh high-stakes and um ambitious like I like I shared. And so, I set out to create our own framework. Our own leadership framework that made sense for us. And what I did with that how I started that was uh I just met with our leaders and said, "When you look at this plan, what would it take for you to be successful in this? What's working for you right now? What isn't working for you right now? Where do you feel like you need more learning? Where do you feel like you need more time? Where do you need more resources?" And this spanned academics, operations, uh this spanned our district staff into our site-based staff, and just really listened. So, we're going we're going to go through some big changes over the next 10 years. These are these are this is a different way of doing school. So, how do I have a really great professional development plan for you as your leader to you for you to be ready to lead that in your buildings, in your departments? And through that recognition that what got us here isn't going to get us there and listening to what people needed, what we what I realized was we needed our own framework and um called that framework or called that framework the framework for future-ready leadership. It has three areas. The first one is to lead for inclusion and belonging and people-centered growth. That that people-centered growth is is our most important area. Uh people are the strategy. Uh people are our most important resource and people need to be known, valued, and needed and they need to have the resources they need to be successful. Other the second area that was needed to implement this academic vision for leadership was uh being adaptive and thinking with a systems lens. It was very clear that the type of learning experiences we're aspiring to weren't going to be done in a silo just in the teaching and learning department. The finance department was going to need to really be aware and not just aware, but consulted and partners at the table. Marketing, communications, same thing. Human resources, this is going to change how we hire, how we retain, how we train. Uh from principals to um directors, all need to be together in this and we need to have a systems a systems lens. And then the third and probably my favorite, uh, is how do you take the the vision and how does it show up in daily action? That's a great question, right? As when you take a strategic plan or a vision statement, what does it look like on a Tuesday morning? When you go into that classroom, you go into that department, how are people living and breathing this out? And so we created as a leadership team through listening, I created all sorts of behaviors and examples. This is what it looks like to live our core values. This is what it looks like to be aligned with flight plan. This is what it looks like to show up as aligned with the strategic plan. This is what it looks like to meet our ends or our ultimate academic outcomes. So specific descriptions of the behaviors as well as examples of what that looks like in practice. So I say all that not because I want us to develop a future-ready leadership framework here. Um, this work has gotten some attention, you know, in the state and and across the country and when I talk with leaders about it, I close with the same thing every time. You don't need our framework. You need your own. But you got to have a plan for how you're developing leaders. Teaching and learning in the school experience isn't the same as what it used to be. What's going to be called upon us for the next 20 years, the same leadership development that we did 20 years ago isn't going to work. So whatever the change is that you're trying to accomplish or this whatever you're trying to attain sustain, you really need to have an intentional plan for how people are going to be to be developed. And I think it needs to be really customized to to your context and to our context and it can be informed by best practices, of course. Um, and I'm I understand those inside and out from inside of education and outside of education. And being consistent with the values of your community at the best place to train leaders from. Mhm. Uh, what do you feel are the key elements of building a strong and high-performing board team? How do the roles of school board members and superintendent integrate with with and complement one another? Mhm. Board governance works well when trust is high, roles are clear, and direction is stable. And that starts with relationships. A shared I want to get to know you, I want you to know me, and I want us to be able to and I shared how I define trust, and I want us to be able to have high trust, clarity in our roles, and direction that is steady and consistent. Let me give you some examples of how I've done this. I race to clarity. I've never found in any initiative that on the back end, in the postmortem, in the final analysis, that we spent too much time on clarity. I've never heard anybody say that. So, uh, over the last couple of years I've led work with our school board to what we do what we call measure what matters. Long process to first identify what's the learning worth doing. What is it that we want to What is it the ex- student experience that we want? Second question, how do we measure that? Now we're measuring what matters. Third question, how are we going to get resources to make sure that that's done? How am I going to execute that? How are we going to report back to the community? Pretty steady consistent framework. National superintendent organization has now baked this into their public education promise and I'm helping leaders across the district or across the the country measure what matters. So in our work together, when we have clarity about what it is we're trying to accomplish, how we're going to measure that, what success looks like, and how we're going to communicate with each other. That's the steadiness and the consistent framework that we need to have regardless of what we're doing. So what I was just describing was like high-level outcomes, system-level outcomes. Give you another example. I mentioned the inspired journey. Academic visioning work I'm proud of creates alignment across K-12 of learning that's inspiring, rooted in discovery, exploration, and pursuit of students' interests and talents. You have a handout that has a has a graphic about this. The specifics aren't important, but being able to work with the school board was vital to this happening. So the board was able to give way in with opinions on what they want the academic experience to look like, how they, uh, where they think resources should be allocated, and to be able to say with confidence and clarity of yes, this is what we want to do as a system. This is what we want the experience the student experience to be. Um, that same setup of what are the outcomes that we want? You as board members, how are you going to know that it's successful? How are we going to report on those? How is the community going to know when those are reported on? And how are we going to iterate and tweak? So nothing should be done just in the rearview mirror. When we report on inspired journey, there was some conflict initially, uh, of should all elementary schools start with discovery groups at the same time or not? Now I don't read that disagreement as friction or anything like that. It's just good conversation for us to think about what's healthy change management. Change management in high-performing organizations is vastly different. It is just a different playbook. You have to be able to protect what's going on and what's going well while being able to look forward and implement change. So in that case, we decided to move forward with just two elementary schools in the first year and then scaled to all in the second year. That was healthy and we had success metrics and that allowed us to make sure that we knew each other's roles, knew how we were going to be communicating with that, and that community trust is increased of not just what is this new program. I'll give you another example. Um, when I was in Minnetonka and we were launching Vantage, similar to Compass here, there was concern in, uh, that community and culture that is predominantly for your college-going, of how are you messing with how we're teaching statistics? Like that's not how it's supposed to go. We aren't into that. We need, you know, reading, writing, arithmetic. We need traditional kids need to get ready for college. I don't want anything that looks like applied or career-based. We want we want this. And this was, you know, 10, 12 years ago. Um, I just imagine you had similar conversations here. And through collaboration with the board of clear direction of what is it that we want this experience to look like? What's a responsible way that we can try this while still not disrupting what people know and value and expect from the system, and hold both truths real. That you can have that experience while trying this new experience and being able to say we're going to report back to you as board members, administration will report back to you as board, and to the community of how things are going. And we have a good idea of what success actually looks like. And ultimately that is student achievement. And it's also student experience. We want our kids to learn and grow at high levels. We also want them to have a great experience and we should have success metrics around all of those. So those are the pieces that I've that I've that I've led, um, continue to lead, and the board relationship was 100% vital to their success. Thank you. So, my question is, how do you balance sustaining and growing programs in Minnetonka with the uncertainties of state and federal funding mechanism for public education? So, I'll tell you how I do this now. Uh, I work hand in hand with our business team, uh, with our business services executive director and our finance director, and we use a framework that takes that says we're going to take our values, translate those into priorities, our priorities into investments, our investments into results. And we evaluate the results with, uh, ROI to assess the, uh, ROI of those. As we are Read the question again. Um, as we are going about that, we are consistently evaluating places to look for efficiencies and places to look for revenue additions. So that we can kind of create a little bit of margin so that we can ebb and flow with the good days and the bad days. Before we're even able to look at where efficiencies can be, I make it very clear across the entire district what the academic vision is and what the student experience vision is. That's essential for everybody to know. Uh, that partnership across and collaboration across the cabinet team or the executive team, across the administrative team, and across um, all of our leaders and district is is essential. We need to know what we're what we're protecting. And if you get kind of a a breakdown between the academic side of the house and the operational side of the house, then we don't know what priorities we're looking at. So that framework of making sure everybody knows what learning looks like here. What does good learning look like and how we're going to invest in that? That is a clarity piece to to really invest in. And then we protect that. I tell people all the time, we need to protect what makes us exceptional. Right now it's Inspired Journey. I saw here yesterday several things that make Wayzata schools exceptional in the classroom and I know that's the case in arts and athletics and activities as well. We need to know what makes us exceptional. This is kind of the metaphor in the business world of and our trucks out the back. If the trucks are the the unit of business that's making us a profit, we need to make sure nothing that's getting in the way of trucks getting produced happens. So we talk a lot about I talk a lot about how do we know what makes us exceptional? What is our brand? And being able to protect that brand. We have growth here in Wayzata obviously and that's because the brand is strong and we need to know what that brand is in this highly competitive environment and to be able to to protect that so that we can so that that can go on. And as we've protected what's what's what makes us us, then we're looking at those efficiencies and areas for for possible additional revenue. I lead a zero-based on the efficiency side I lead a zero-based staffing right now. Every school doesn't start with any teachers. We look at enrollments by grade and look at what is needed. There's no legacy assumptions in there. I lead the review consistently for legacy assumptions in the budget. Primary one of that right now is technology services. As a technology world evolves and as prices and inflation continues to go up, we need to look for redundancies and look at contracts people haven't looked at in a long time and look at what's the role of AI and operations to find those efficiencies. And not just in bad days. I'm aware of the financial position here in Wayzata. I mean fund balance, the you know, assigned revenue, the you know, the spots of Wayzata cafe and where community ed's at. I've looked at all of that, the triple A bond rating. I'd be excited to work with, you know, Trevor and team to look more into that. Um And I know that that hasn't been the case always and that took a lot of intentionality and care. And as I worked with people yesterday around the district, there's still some lingering, you know, heartburn from cost containment and what happened over the last couple years. So we can't take any of that for granted. We can't say, well, we're growing right now, we'll worry about efficiencies when it's time to cut. We need to always be protecting the long-term future. That gets to that care. There's just a great care for this district. This district has been well cared for. When I'm here in my first year, I'm going to make decisions that five-year version of me, the 10-year version of me and the 20-year version of me is going to appreciate. We're not going to not look at efficiencies cuz we don't need to and then have it all catch up and look back and say, I wish that wouldn't have happened. We're going to protect what makes us exceptional, protect the classroom experience. And when there's an opportunity to create a little bit more margin that future proofs us to the question of uncertain state and federal areas, we're going to seize that opportunity. On the other side of the ledger, we should always be looking at revenue. You know, there's some creative ways to do this. I'm hesitant to to share examples on this, but I will. And because the concept matters not the example. The concept is we should be looking for creative ways to maximize our revenue. The examples are not me suggesting what Wayzata public schools should do. They're just examples that have been successful in the communities I've served. So [snorts] one, the clear one is enrollment. This is a highly competitive enrollment environment and it's not just the neighboring public schools, it's our private schools as well as the emergence of more AI-based schools. If we're not privy to that, then we're just kind of being naive. This is a different enrollment environment. You all know that. That's another defining feature of why it's just a little different to work and lead in the night conference is there are all sorts of options for people and as technologies evolve, whether we like it or not, our families will have more and more options. And so we've got to continue to provide a great service to people and to and and we do. And we've got to continue to make sure the quality's high. So that's your biggest driver of enrollment. But the examples for creative ways of of driving enrollment is last year I led there's a public school in the metro that wanted to get out of some of their instruction for higher level courses and I led a contract where we are providing services to another public school district at significant profit cuz they're already courses we were running. Similar with a private athletics-based school in our community. We are an we are the academic provider for them. Not suggesting that, so just sharing that again as a caveat, that's not what I'm suggesting for us here. I want to know what values make sense for our community here. I just want us to always be thinking about how do we future proof this great district and how do we create more revenue? Another piece that I'm interested in is I've worked with a small group of public schools that have endowments. Don't [clears throat] have one set up yet. But I wonder about that for Wayzata. There's a district right now in Michigan that I'm working with that their endowment spills off about 2-3% of their annual budget each year just through investments. What would that look like for us when we think of stability instability for state and federal if we were able to provide that type of experience, we've now provided a little bit of cushion. These are all things that we need to work on here in Wayzata that the majority of other districts aren't even thinking about. They're trying to get the the doors open and trying to get things just just running. These are the things that we need to continue to tinker with to try to make sure that we have the sustainability that we need while we control the factors that we can. There's a lot of factors we can't, but those are factors that we can. So we need to learn into that with ingenuity. And foresight really. Thank you. Remind me what that means. 1 hour left. Okay. >> [laughter] >> Thank you, Amy. Thanks for bearing with me with my voice here. Okay. Next question is coming from me. Um >> Yeah. Special education needs for students are increasing in both numbers and complexity. Mhm. What are your experiences providing outstanding services to all students? Yeah. Thanks, Director Little. I directly supervise our special services department. We have a director of special services. In my current role about half of the cabinet team SLT team I directly supervise. And one of the integrations there is I also supervise learning teaching curriculum. And I am insistent that the line between those departments is as thin as it possibly can be. There needs to be some differences of course in terms of reporting, in terms of funding, in terms of man um making sure we have all of our mandated pieces in place. And when we get to the student experience, the learning needs to be deeply integrated. So what we've done is we've adopted a personalized with those two departments working hand in hand, they've adopted a personalized learning framework that gets to how we meet the needs of each student. Has five dimensions. I think I'm going to touch on that a little bit more later, but the five dimensions are partnerships, responsiveness, rigor, authenticity and then the learning environment. Partnership, all great learning starts with a relationship. If you think of anyone you've learned with and from, imagine there was a great relationship behind that. Responsiveness is one size doesn't fit fit all. Special education is a great example of that for us. It's kind of the first example of personalized learning. One size doesn't fit all. So what how are we getting to know each student's story, their strengths, their struggles, their sparks and their supports. So I do 4S survey our teams I have them do the 4S survey so they know that about each student and they're able to be responsive to the needs and continuously progress monitoring to make sure we know where students are at. Rigor, high expectations for each and every student. Authenticity, nothing should be just done in the school context. It should be something that you can use beyond the school walls. And then the learning environment. You've done an amazing job here in Wayzata of paying attention to your environment, Um, but it matters. How how people show up, what the space looks like, having things ready for you matters. And so that includes intentionality. So that's personalized learning framework that's created by having those two departments with a very thin line in between as well as consistent collaboration and guaranteed collaboration on a weekly basis that reviews data all rolled up into the measuring what matters plan that I talked about so that there's system coherence. So that the special education director and the teaching and learning director aren't looking at any different data than the board is. They are looking at the exact same data, the exact same metrics that are aligned into the school improvement plans, that are aligned into principal's individual goals, that are aligned into my goals, that all has coherence. It's like one huge zipper. Um, at the same time, I mentioned and I don't want to to I mentioned there is some obligations of that you need to meet with special services and special education. Um, and so we ensure that those those are there too by having the right training and compliance and all of that in place too cuz that's important too, but the the learning experience is is defined that way. Thank you. Mhm. Good morning, Dr. Virgin. I have one follow-up from your previous response. Very quickly, could you define or clarify what the four S's survey is? That is from the Search Institute and um high they don't call it high performing relationships, but in maybe high performing relationships. Okay, excellent. Thank you. My question is Wayzata Public Schools is headed to a capital projects and technology levy referendum in April. What are your experiences leading schools or school districts through construction or maintenance projects? Yeah, I'll start with how I'm doing it right now. Two major construction projects happening right now. One of them is very similar to the Innovation Center, the addition to Wayzata High School. Similar in size and similar in intention and um first thing and this is, you know, specific to the the referendum is you thank people who got you here. You thank the community who trusted us with this and the teams that are working nonstop to to make this. But to get the work done, you convene the the teams that the appropriate teams that are already in motion. So whether that's the facilities task force or other teams that you might already have here, the strategic partners and any other groups. Um, so in your case it's Kraus-Anderson and Wold. In our case right now I'm working with Deventer and Knutson for the architecture and the construction. Convene the teams and one of the first things I do and I'm doing is to make sure that we have role clarity across what's being done internally and externally. Elders plays a key role in this. In a previous um successful bond passage that led to a construction project first move is to sit down with Ehlers to see are we going to do this in one dispersion or are we going to do two? What's the benefit of that? Obviously doing two buys us a little bit more time, lower interest rates. I don't know what the plan is here if we've discussed that through, but that would be something I would want to talk about, but when I've done that in previous project, Ehlers is a first meeting to figure out what's our timeline for getting the money, what's going to be our best strategy that minimizes our interest rates, that minimizes our our any costs related to our debts and maximizes flexibility really. So that's a that's a piece. And then as we get to role clarity across the teams of working with the strategic partners. So created in this case I'm using a RACI chart. I like that across a lot of teams, responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. I find that's really important in these big projects because you've got, like I said, internal and external people and it crosses departments. I like the RACI chart for a lot of project management, but as we get interdepartmental and inside and outside the organization, a tool like that makes sense. You there's plenty of tools out there that that can can do the same thing. That's just that's just one example. As we create role clarity in that, we also create clarity in what is the learning expectation. The vote we have here is to create exceptional learning spaces. So when I was in Minnetonka, I led the design for learning effort was what they called which was a lot of revamping spaces, kind of like a quite a few that have have been done around here. Older buildings that were getting revamped to accommodate for growth. Led that team as part of the innovation work across the district and that was rooted in Stanford Design School, Stanford D. School who I went on to be a trainer for and that has a really specific way to how do we design learning spaces, learning environments. That's a space that's a format that teams I lead use. That's not what I would bring here, but what I would insist on is that we do have a learning framework, that we do have a specific plan for how are these spaces going to increase and change the learning experience. Of course we need them for capacity and of course we need them for safety. Got it. And we shouldn't just be recreating exactly what we've done in in other spaces in terms of the experience. So those teams, so to kind of capture that a little bit right now, how I'm working through this is working with the strategic partners, Ehlers architects, Ehlers architects and construction, creating role clarity. Having a specific learning framework. And then having a very planful and proactive communication with the community. Kind of the the I'm trying to think of a um a misnomer would be to say we're post referendum, we got the vote, now we go insular. It should be it's post referendum, we got the vote, we accelerate trust. We show people we are so grateful, we are going to make good on this commitment. We are going to have spaces that are top of the line. We've gone out and researched what the best schools in the country are doing on this. We've looked in the private sector, we've looked in the public sector. You are going to be so proud of the spaces that we have. You're going to be so proud of what we have done. Your students are going to have such a great experience because we've passed this tech levy. We're going to be able to do here's what we're going to be able to do. So having that really proactive communication plan because the last thing we would want is somebody to wonder what's going on there. And so we would need to have a really strategic engagement plan so that people can be proud of the decision that they made. Thank you. And then the to accelerate trust and then I I think just specific to you to the vote here, I would make sure that even when it goes well, we still have a thorough postmortem, that we understand why we got the results we did because we are going to have another effort at some point and we need to position ourselves for success for that. Again, long-term planning, setting doing things our future selves will thank us for. Thank you. The next question. Academic excellence is a core value here at Wayzata Public Schools. How have you and how will you ensure that student outcomes show growth for each and every student? What does this look like for all our students including those who are high achieving, maintaining or struggling academically in our schools? >> [clears throat] >> I'm going to give you four examples. Um, just off the bat and we could we could talk about this for quite a while and I would thoroughly enjoy it. The core value, the first core value listed of achievement is part of the reason that I'm at this table today. Your commitment to achievement is attractive to me, is inspiring to me and is what we need to ensure. So the first example I'll go through quickly cuz I already touched on it is ensuring that students have a great instructional experience and a coherent instructional experience. So building that personalized learning framework of the partnerships, responsiveness, rigor, authenticity and learning environment. Uh that's a framework that works there. Um inspiring work here being done with SEL and the 5D framework. I'm envious of some of the alignment that's already in place and to hear leaders and teachers use common language yesterday is pretty impressive. And that's what it takes is we need to have we can't be talking across each other and we need to have an understanding of what that looks like. So whatever the framework is, it needs to align with the learning you want to see, the learning the community wants to see and it needs to be specific and it needs to be monitored and I need to be accountable to that. Again, I'm going to keep you very close to the learning. I understand that we have a lot of functions as a board and my belief is you need to know what the learning experience looks like and I have done that over and over again. >> [snorts] >> The one piece of the the personalized learning framework that I didn't touch on that I want to go just a tiny bit deeper with is that rigor part. Um rigor is high expectations for every student. And how I define the high expectations is through critical thinking, communication, creativity, and collaboration. Not how much can you memorize. There are core knowledge that we need to have, of course. And having students be able to have those that they're really creative, they're problem solvers, critical thinking. That's what students need to thrive uh in the in the economy. And that's um how I've how I've defined rigor, and that's how we design the student experience. When I was high school principal, uh I would joke, but I was serious. There was really nothing those kids couldn't do that I could do. They were really capable of so so much. Now, I might have had more resources or time in my day or some experiences, but they were capable of so much that I think one of the big things holding us back and holding so many kids back is just low expectations. When we give the When we have really high expectations and we lift the lid on expectations for each and every child, I have seen time and time again people raise to the rise to the occasion. And same for our educators. People do not want low expectations. People thrive in that environment. >> [snorts] >> Second example. >> [clears throat] >> I led the redesign of a department uh for learning analytics, learning analytics data and reporting. And the department reallocated staffing from kind of assessment coordinator type roles and technology contracts into a whole warehouse on how do we get lead indicators? Of course, we have a required reporting that we need to do in the back end of graduation rates, MCA scores, all those things. That's not as hard as it used to be. You can report on I mean, for the reporting side, I mean. It's You can get that stuff that's that's descriptive statistics. That's just done in the rearview mirror. That's what every district in the country does. The leading districts have data that they know how to disrupt trends. The leading districts see indicators of when a student gets to this spot in their reading trajectory in second grade, we need to intervene. The leading districts know if this course isn't passed in high school. It's often English 10 or 11. We need to intervene because if you don't pass English 10 or 11, there's a good chance you're not going to meet graduation. That if you don't get to Algebra 2 by a certain grade, you're not going to get to a certain level of math. That's what the leading districts do. They don't just report on what happened last year. So, I led a redesign of all sorts of resources to get to a specific department for learning analytics data and reporting to make sure that we have actionable data, not noise, that we have actionable data. Data that a teacher can use to change the experience on a Tuesday morning. Cuz if I have data and you have data, but it doesn't change the teacher's experience on a Tuesday morning or the counselor's experience or the interventionist or whoever it might be, the data's I mean, it's it's not no good cuz it's good to know what how things are going, I guess, but it's not changing anybody's life. And that's what we're here to do. So, that's example two about ac- >> [clears throat] >> ensuring academic excellence. Example three. I've trained every leader in our system on the learning leader framework. You have a copy of this. It's the quadrants that are red. There's four quadrants. It's all based on what kind of results are you getting? And do you know what kind of results you're And do you know why you're getting those? This is the This is part of the continuous improvement struggle sometimes in high-performing districts is we're getting high results, but we don't know why. This was I found this in Minnetonka to be the case, and that's where I really started investing in this. Because And the problem with that is if conditions change or if we try to scale our results to somewhere else and we don't really know why we're getting the results we are, we don't have great success. This is what the research calls a lucky district. Because of the resources we have, because of the students that are served there, because of whatever the factors might be, students are performing well, and we don't really understand why. Leading districts know exactly why they're getting the results they do. They invest in data analysis of those lead indicators, and they have really high standards. Leading districts have high results, high understanding of the antecedents of the results. So, I've trained every leader, that's one of the core onboarding procedures is that people know how to analyze that data, people know for whatever it is for their context, whatever's in their SGP or however that aligns, but how do you analyze that data, how do you access that data, and how do you move that to action? That process is something we call data to action to growth. Fourth example. Sorry. >> [clears throat] >> I'm proud to have been the principal and to now supervise a school that ASCD uh professional development organization calls an unpredictable school. I've told this story publicly probably over 200 times. And I get I get emotional every time. Um School of increasing racial diversity, increasing free and reduced lunch popu- population, increasing graduation rates, increasing college level access, increasing scores on AP. Unpredictable school. Five conditions. I'll go through this quick here. Um As we s- analyze how did that happen? Five conditions are in place. And this is what I train people and get to write and talk about across the country, too. First one, and probably the most important one, became the title of this work, and it's our strength is our diversity. We have to believe that we are a better school because each student is here. And then if one of those students wasn't here tomorrow, we're not as good of a school. That everybody has unique assets, values that they bring to our school. We should know them, we should nurture them, and we are a better place because of each child. Second piece is grow your guiding coalitions. Work with staff, have them lead the way. Firmly believe that leaders prioritize. Talked about that, if everything's important, nothing's important. Leaders prioritize, but teams solve. I am not the solver of the English 10 11 issue I just described. I know it exists. I can ideate, I can brainstorm, I can give resources, I can put my thumb on the scale, I can hold people accountable, but our English 10 and 11 teachers are really good at solving that problem. So, you get your guiding coalitions to believe in what you're doing, and you empower them. They don't get to make up their own priorities. There isn't drift, but people are empowered to solve problems. Again, similar to the student expectation, when people uh have high expectations, they rise to them. Teachers in Izeta public schools teach here for a reason. And if we have really high expectations for them, coupled with support, they're going to do a great job. Third piece is you center the people you're serving in the problem solving. So, if you're having an issue with a student group or a grade level or whatever it might be not achieving success, you also empower their voices. And you talk with them about what's going on, what's getting What are the barriers? You analyze it at a macro level, but also at a qualitative level. I'm trained in statistical research, and I do all sorts of modeling, but there's nothing better than a need-in-need conversation with somebody that you get to the heart of what's going on. That is huge. You also work with people to find the bright spots. Cuz even in when things aren't working, there are spots where it's working. Particularly in systems like Izeta. That's the different continuous improvement here than when you're in like a turnaround school or a sustaining school is even if it's not working, there are pockets where it's working. So, you sit down with people where it is working, and you hear about that. So, strength is our diversity, guiding coalitions are centering the voices of those we're trying to serve, studying our impact. So, having the courage to study the impact. And then five is institutionalizing the change. So, those are the frameworks that I are the steps in that process that I believe leads to an unpredictable school. And not only do I believe it, I live it. I live it, and I've done it. Um and I'm really proud of it. >> [cough and clears throat] >> So, teachers are one of our most important stakeholder groups. How do you view the superintendent's role in building a strong, productive relationship with teachers and their representatives. Yeah. So, >> [clears throat] >> I agree. >> [laughter] >> You know, one one strategy I have is I start every day in a school. I do that because it changes my entire mindset for the day. Once in a while I start in a department, but I do not start my office. Everybody knows it. You You They know not to expect me there that I start every day in in a building. I tell every leader that I that I work with your desk is a dangerous place to lead the district from. I felt that as a school principal as well. It's not a great place to lead from. You need to be out in the action. So, that's one way I do it is just by is just by being visible. I also do it by knowing instruction. I teach courses in instructional methods in instructional leadership. That's the class I teach for the University of Minnesota in principles. In the principal licensure program is an instructional leadership. I used to teach in the teacher licensure program. My PhD is in curriculum and instruction and I stay current with all the instructional practices. I am a lead Not all the instructional practices. I try to stay current with instructional practices. I'm a lead learner in that way. I also taught. I think my experience as a teacher I get value from every single day. Teachers are the roles most connected to student achievement. That's not just a hunch, though our hunch would probably tell us that for the kids in your lives or people you love in your lives that the teachers are the most connected to student achievement, but the research also tells us that. And I taught. At the end of the day we are a learning organization. Learning is the verb of the district. And I'm really proud of the teaching that I that I continue to do. I also come to you as the son, son-in-law, grandson, great-grandson, brother, brother-in-law, nephew, and cousin of teachers. I have a deep respect for teaching. It's kind of my identity actually. I've been asked through this process as people have tried to help me prepare or people have walk-in about yesterday asked, "So, what's your leadership superpower?" I really don't think I have one, but if I had to name one, it's I'm a great teacher. I help people get to their best experiences to be the best version of themselves. Whether that's principals, cabinet members, students, teachers. I'm a teacher at my core and that's the lock and stock of what we do. That's the bread and butter of who we are as an organization. And the last thing here that I'd share share about that is I make sure I model instructional practices that I want to see. We have a five frame five-step framework for instruction. And that's how I go about instruction every time I'm in front of staff. Cuz I believe and I and I kind of I I believe that anytime you're in front of staff, they're asking themselves, "Could this guy teach my class? What was he like in the classroom? Has he taught before?" They're asking themselves that. And if I'm asking them to use this personalized learning framework, how am I personalizing learning for them? Now, whatever the framework is here, you can you can count on when I'm in front of staff, they're going to see me show up with that instructional framework and it's going to be really intentional. This is a long one. Good. Yep. >> [laughter] >> All right. One of the things that Wayzata prides itself on is the rich, unique, powerful voices that make up our administrators and our teachers. Please speak to what you see as the cabinet's role and how you plan to bring out the strengths of our diverse voices. Along those same lines, how would you respond if a member of your administrative team failed to follow district protocol or governance norms? Yeah. >> [clears throat] >> So, I'm going to start with a belief on this one and then get into some examples of how I do this. Um Why's that a water? Thank you, Amy. It's on brand. Um Matches my tie. Okay, so collaboration as a core value of the district and as a core value of mine. That's something that you hopefully have felt today and will continue to feel. I appreciate that that's a core value of the district. Accountability works well when it's clear, consistent, and paired with support. So, clear is what does success look like? Consistent is nobody's getting singled out and it's not just an episode. Accountability sometimes can feel like an annual review or something that happens quarterly or something. Accountability is a system. Is belief. It's a how we go about our work. It's taking ourselves seriously. It's I want to be accountable. I will tell you exactly what I'm accountable to. I gave you the five results that you'll get from my entry plan and I want to be accountable to those. That is not just something that happens episodic. So, clear, consistent, and paired with support. The paired with support part is you know, really important that that's tailored to the people you're you're serving. So, when I think of the responsibilities of Wayzata superintendent, of supporting cabinet members, of supporting principals, that's work I do and that's work I already described for you of how we created a framework together to support them in their work. And those have clear deliverables, they have mission alignment, they're built on our core values, they're evidence-based, they have clear look-for behaviors, follow-through behaviors, and everybody has a voice in it. It doesn't mean we have a voice in where we're glorious as an organization. We're just kind of a free-for-all, but people have a voice in what support looks like. And again, it's kind of back to what I talked about when I talked about leading an unpredictable school, is it's really important to center the voices of the people you're serving and what they need and to trust that they have an important insight into that. So, accountability to me is ongoing. It's rooted in in the clarity, consistency, and support. And honestly, it feels like professionalism. If you want to lead work in Wayzata, this is a professional environment. You You should We want this. That's when done well, this feels like professionalism and not something that that gets in the way. So, I mentioned the um the future-ready leadership framework as an example of the development side of it. The kind of addressing things. I'll give you a couple couple of examples here. Um Let me you know, careful with the data privacy. So, I ask you to give me some grace on that, but um there's two big camps in addressing performance. One is when we have values misalignment and we've missed our some of our kind of non-negotiables. We have to have some non-negotiables. People not acting in the interest of our strategic directions. People not aligning with our core values of achievement and collaboration and community and integrity and equity and respect. If people aren't aligning with those, that's different. Professional ethics and at excellence. To me, excellence is an always behavior. You don't get to just show up one day and say, "I want to be excellent now." Everybody wants to be successful. Not everybody's willing to put in the preparation it takes to be successful. Everybody talks about excellence at big things like interviews and board meetings and strategic plans. Excellence is an always behavior. It's what do you do when nobody's watching? Would you be proud to do put your calendar of today on the board table? If you came to me today and said, "Hey, how did you spend your time? Did it align with the strategic plan?" I will hold myself accountable to excellence is a standard every single day. You don't just show up once in a while and speak to it. It's something that you do and you believe in your model like crazy. >> [snorts] >> Those are our non-negotiables. When people violate the non-negotiables, that's a different type of accountability. If that has been a consistent pattern, now we're into a spot where we're looking for something else to do. That's the exception and not the rule. When we have performance, but our values are matched and we have performance issues, now we're into the coaching up, seeing it through, very tight timelines, very regular check-ins, not episodes that are random, but regular coaching. Coaching that doesn't put ideas on the table. And I'm trying to be cautious with data privacy here, but I can some of the coaching I'm doing right now would be questions like walking leaders through pre-mortems. I've talked about the post, the pre, of working them through of Okay, so you're making this decision. Let's work through all the reasons it's not going to be successful. Or let's work through all the reasons it's going to be successful. Asking people to think about the element two of the future-ready leadership framework I talked about is the systems impact. I coach leaders to think about, "What's the ripple effect of this? If you make this decision, what might transportation think of that? If you make this decision, how's that going to show up for your middle school colleagues?" So, you coach leaders through, "What are the questions and thought processes you need to do so that your impact can be multiplied?" One of the first reads I give to our leaders is the It's about 15 years old now from Liz Wiseman, Multipliers, is we only we each only can be in one spot at one time, right? Um but if we're able to multiply our impact, that's when we can be the people that supercharge the world. And so, those are the the way that you multiply your impact is through really steady, consistent, um coaching. Thank you. Yeah. >> [clears throat] >> Thank you. Uh considering the conversation around reading instruction and practices designed to bring more student up to grade level in reading, what have you learned through your own experience or seen succeeding in other states or districts that require leadership from superintendent? Mhm. How do you monitor and measure the effectiveness of these literacy programs? Mhm. So, we've we've been coming through these in different ways, but um I'm not going to take that for granted, so I'll dive dive back into some of those examples. First one is the lead learner. Uh I've done the ReadAct trainings. I don't know how many superintendents have done those. I've done them. I'll never ask a teacher to do something I'm not willing to do. And people know that. Some examples of how we protect that and how we to your question of how do you how do you basically change your trajectory and how do you monitor that? One is to marshal resources. Through cost containment that was required last year, we needed to restructure some of our coaching roles that were a little too far um from the classroom and weren't having the ROI that you'd expect and the time horizon had come. They'd been in the in those position or those roles that existed long enough that we knew there wasn't wasn't an evidence-based practice in that context. Restructured it to get more people at different rates, but got closer to the learning. Smaller groups and more consistent one-on-one small group intervention. So, that's one role is to marshal resources. Second is to protect time. We only have so many things available to us, right? There's a lot of constraints, um but I never focus on the constraints. I focus on what I can control and protect time. Literacy in the Measuring What Matters plan I mentioned is one of the six core tenets of that. And so, we've decided as a school board that literacy's important. And so, when we look at our professional development time, collaboration time, there is non-negotiable protected time for that. That's one one piece a superintendent can do. So, two pieces three pieces so far is you model the what you expect, marshal resources, protect time, and you sustain the work in steadiness. So, this kind of gets these two parts get to kind of the what have I seen across the country and what have I seen have success is random acts of professional development aren't successful. It's a steadiness. It's knowing this is our way of doing things. There's a lot of different ways we could do this, but we're going to develop our strategy and we're going to get really good at that strategy. I think of the world sometimes in terms of like music or athletics. If you watch like a band or a sport team, they don't have like a new genre or a new offense each year. They get good at what they're getting good at and they have the discipline to see that through. That'd be the fourth piece. Fifth piece is something I got from uh one of our elementary schools. Uh this is not my idea, I just observed it from the principal. He's been the principal of two Blue Ribbon schools and just earned a Blue Ribbon um this year or last year right before I was Blue Ribbon went away, >> [laughter] >> I guess. Um but his belief is to flood adults at literacy. Um similar to that first example I had about around marshaling resources, but he works nonstop with student teachers, um has more student teachers than any school in the district, and with senior living uh communities uh with the belief of the more adults you have in the space, that's how you get literacy gains. And he's got results with that. So, um what I want you to hear there is believe learner part, marshaling resources, protecting time, sustaining the work in a steadiness. Uh and what I'd say to the steadiness, too, is the part that we touched on already is that really investment in uh learning analytics. Um learning the the most specific need that drew that was literacy. Um was to try to figure out how do we intervene before it's too late um when students are moving from learning to read to um reading to learn and how do we make sure that we've got lead indicators and that's how we develop the data to action to growth um cycle. And then the then just flooding adults with student teachers and um uh community partnerships. So, the next question is Wa is that our public schools has a strong tradition of being a place that welcomes each and every student and by extension each and every family. What do you think the role of non-partisanship has in this? Mhm. This is some core value work, too, I think. And I think of those six core values, I see I see that that show up here. Uh how I'm working on this, you know, just in recent examples is, you know, student walkouts. Um we've had those in all my different roles. We've had different work around supporting families around um the surge of immigration enforcement. Those are just recent projects that are are needs, areas that have that have come up. Um role of non-partisanship and and just kind of our role overall is to continue to remind us our focus is on learning. Um we need to stay mission-driven and we need to stay that um our focus is on is on student learning. At that with that said, you need to have a recognition that people are going to have different needs at different times. Um and those are often going in different directions. Staff members will need more of this less of this. You moved too fast on this. You moved too slow on this. You said too much of this. We said too little. And that's not to say that to to bemoan staff, that's just how it is. There's, you know, family, students, you'll have differing different needs and and different perspectives. How I've gone about this in recent, you know, I mentioned that you know, student walkout is just one specific issue recently. The same approach that I've done with with other issues is you really begin by careful listening. Um the more you slow things down and really lean into, "Hey, we're going to keep the focus on learning. We're going to make sure schools are great for each of our students. Listen to um what people are needing. How can we get those? And how do we make sure that we're looking out for the long term stability and of the district and of the organization as well as the individuals. So, you're kind of holding both truths. Um you're working out with each and every and you're also looking at how am I protecting the organization um in a way that keeps us where we're supposed to where we're supposed to be, which is making the student experience great, a place where each and every student belongs, place where each and every student can learn, and we are able to do that by listening as a first step. And then it takes some thoughtful decision-making and not recklessness and not carelessness. Uh I've never been in a spot where the with these where I've regretted just taking a breath, calling a colleague, talking it things through. That's usually not a a regret that we that we have. Dr. Anderson's a trusted colleague um in many of those calls and I'm sure you can imagine that he he gives great counsel in those. I'm proud that I have a track record of unifying different communities. It's a little bit of a tough thing to answer cuz it's like describing how do you make relationships. It's a human piece. Uh I've worked with different school boards, two different lake conference communities, various demographics. And I hope through this process that you are connecting with people who have worked with me and hearing there's a track record of keeping people whole. And that's deep care for the organization and deep care for people. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Um Wa is that our public schools benefits from strong business, community, and parental support of With that comes both opportunities and challenges. Please describe how you would engage with these school communities to build trust and collaboration while maintaining boundaries that support and ensure the district's internal systemic integrity. Yeah. Uh right, there is there unique opportunities and challenges and I wouldn't have it any other way. Uh these are this is the communities I I run to and they differentiate us. Our relationships, our partnerships, our engagement of our community is a strategic asset and it can't be viewed any other way. It also can't be taken for granted. It is a careful, learned skill set. When I was in the talking we were launching Vantage, uh I learned that be careful what you ask for because people are going to say yes. Um and they want to come in and help, and they want to make the schools great, and there's a lot of pride in that. And so you better be ready to follow through um things. I'm going to give you um three different examples uh that are uh illustrate how this how this could come to life. One is on a on a family level. Um I talked about increasing um uh college-level participation with 300% um increases for our black or African American students, and 200% increases for our Hispanic students. Uh one small strategy, individual, not small in impact but small in scale, that connects to community partnerships was when we had students historically underrepresented and underserved in our that were first time to AP courses, I worked with a group of parents that had racial affinity with students that were first to AP courses to create a mentorship program for them to have somebody outside of the school, not an educator, it wasn't tutoring, it wasn't that sort of stuff. We own that, but somebody that they could talk about what is post-secondary look like. What's the benefit of taking this class? How do you get this onto your transcript? And that kind of gets back to the scaling of the bright spots is because though there are still achievement disparities and they used to be a lot bigger, there were students having success. And so how I found that was I just pressed into where are underrepresented populations, and how are those students showing up, and sitting down with them and saying, "How might we help other kids?" And it was a parent's idea of let me create a parent network to support first time to AP students. So that's kind of a a low-scale uh uh zoned-in example. Another example of engaging partnerships, um we've launched an innovation sandbox, which is pretty cool. Um it's got hoteling space for entrepreneurs across the community. The mayor um came back, this was pre-COVID, came back with an idea from the Kauffman Foundation to create a space where we could have entrepreneurs in residence, where they could teach classes to students, they could um use some of the Wi-Fi and spaces that that schools have, and could um have just an uh a thought exchange, like sharing a sharing of ideas, you know, kind of various Silicon Valley type type vibes. And um to get that going, um I led the effort with the mayor and the city, the Chamber of Commerce, and 1 Million Cups, which is a entrepreneurship networking group, to and our teachers to create an entrepreneurship hub that we call the Innovation Sandbox. The energy that comes out of there, the ideas that come out of there, is not your traditional what's happening in a business class in any day school in Minnesota or any day school USA. That's real adults working on real problems with students. CPAs, attorneys, rotate through to give advice to entrepreneurs. They do 10 hours a week, 5 hours a month, whatever it might be, so people can come to get their entrepreneurship ideas started. Students can do that for their DECA projects or for their entrepreneurship capstones. It's this connectivity of ideas. That type of partnership is unique to this part of the state and this part of the this part of the country, and changes the the learning experience. Another a third example of a one that I'm leading right now that's just getting going is partnership with Opus School um at the University of of St. Thomas, and uh there are two related programs. They have a small business development center um similar where they provide consulting hours and things like that um to help small businesses get going, and with a lens on entrepreneurship. Um in that innovation uh hub or innovation campus that I talked about that has a lot of similarities with what's planned at Wayzata High School, um University of St. Thomas is going to have their first of its kind satellite office in that in that space. So that they can consult with community members, they can consult with um students, and have that presence. The future of learning is a very blurred world. Um meaning, let me say that differently. Um the future of of learning has a blending and blurring of what used to be silos of K-12, higher ed, industry. The blending and blurring allows for authentic learning, allows for deep learning. And so when we have university faculty, entrepreneurs, students engaged in the same space, the level of authenticity and rigor is through the roof. Give me another example of that of the St. Thomas is they also have the community entrepreneurship program that will also be in this um in this innovation campus um starting this summer through a partnership of the city and DEED that I was the go-between. The city put forward some money, DEED puts forward some money, and they run a summer entrepreneurship program. It'll be the first of its kind for students. They've done about eight out of Midtown Global Market for uh populations that are underrepresented in business ownership. Um but they started doing some satellite programs, so they'll do a satellite program for adults in the community in the fall, where they're going to run the first of its kind with high school students uh boot camp this summer. Um how it works is you need to attend six full-day sessions, you get coaching throughout. Um if you graduate and then do the 6-month consulting program, you get three It's all free. St. Thomas and DEED and the city all put up for it. You get $3,000 of seed money as well as all that free consulting time. Those types of partnerships, again, are what make our districts great. Um are what make the learning experience different. Um and they're rooted in relationships, they're rooted in being visible, they're rooted in having a bold vision. Um Sorry. >> [snorts] >> They're rooted in having a bold academic vision. As we think about previous question asked about the the referendum, I would imagine that our families here and you aren't expecting us to pass a referendum, build places, and have it be the learning of 20 years ago, or have it be the learning that you could find in any school in the country. I imagine that we have an expectation of excellence, innovation paired with great execution that will redefine and write the next chapter of an amazing learning experience. And that's the skill set I bring to you here. That is ex- those are experiences that I've built intentionally uh through the roles I've held, that I build intentionally through the networks that I'm part of, both in the industry and out of the industry. Since I finished my dissertation uh a handful years ago, I've joined a group that I put myself out of my comfort zone to make sure I'm in a group that I'm the only person from K-12 in the group. It's called the Learning and Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University. It's invitation-only um consortium. It's a confidential cohort of about 30 of us. Um and it's all about how do you lead change, and how do you keep your organizations fresh? And so the business world is constantly talking about what got us here and didn't get us there. And that I don't run the school, I don't show up like, "Hey, I'm going to run this like a business." But that thinking is in the background. It is still a education organization, and it's still values-driven, and that's how I show up. But how you run a large organization is all the thinking that I have. I don't put that on the table with teachers and things like that cuz I don't think that's productive language, and that's not their their work. But that type of thinking has really or type of learning experience has really stretched my has really stretched my leadership in preparation to lead Wayzata into its next chapter. And that type of vision is exactly what we need to have. We need to have We shouldn't have a pretty good vision. We shouldn't have a good enough vision. We need to have the best vision, and to make sure that this is the best spot for each and every one of our kids. All right. Please provide a summary statement of why you feel you are a good fit to lead Wayzata Public Schools, and please share your vision for what you would hope to accomplish during your time here spent as our superintendent. So when you break down what it means to be the superintendent of Wayzata schools, >> [snorts] >> I have direct and exccessful successful experience in every facet of the job. I have complete confidence that we will achieve success. What I know about great leadership is it's about fit and timing. Every facet of this job I have met or exceeded previous expectations. When you look at the different facets of supervising SLT or cabinet roles, launching nationally recognized programs, supporting principals, building projects, working in a competitive enrollment environment, and increasing enrollment, setting an academic vision, policy writing and input implementation, aligning resources to the academic vision, executing that vision, collaborating with boards across the country to design coherent measuring systems, high-profile scrutiny, and knowing that results matter. Business partnerships and community relations, excellent operations, and ensuring excellence not just in academics, but in the arts and activities and athletics. >> [snorts] >> Handling personnel matters, creating cultures of belonging for students and staff. This is people are the strategy, and one of the things that we need to pay a lot of attention to is making sure we've got great people. As we grow, growing only matters if quality scales with it. So, how do we have great people to continue to do that? Union relations, vision for artificial intelligence and emerging technologies that prioritizes student safety and well-being, and protects us against where the provides guardrails for the learning that we want to happen, but also has our students ready for the future. I I facilitated the group for the National Superintendents Association that wrote that wrote the toolkit for districts to navigate emerging technologies. That was published just a couple of months ago. The being a visible community leader. I know what it means to be visible in a one high school district. My first teaching job, I was in a multi high school district, and I grew up in a four high school district in 196, Rosemount, Apple Valley, Eagan. And when I moved from multi high school district into a one high school district to teach, I knew I would never be anywhere else. That the community feeling, that we are all one community, and what can happen when we're all together and working together and have a shared vision is something I knew I would be in the rest of of my life, and I know that that's the the system that I where I want to where I want to continue to be, and I have have demonstrated success with that. Increasing revenue streams is another another piece where I have direct experience with. And probably most importantly, when you think about what it means to be Wayzata superintendent, is I have increased I have ex I have a demonstrated track record of increasing academic achievement for all student groups in two lake conference communities. Core value number one is achievement. When I look at what it means to be Wayzata superintendent for this chapter, based on the great care that we're in, the trust, the engagement, the performance of the district, what this next chapter needs is a visionary leader with all the experiences I just described. I will invest fully with my family in this community. I will make the same transition Dr. Anderson did 18 years ago. And you can count on me meeting or exceeding every expectation for every child that walks through that door. I hire people all the time. Interviews, letters of reference, it all helps, they're all data points. I've given you a 47-page candidate profile because I have nothing that I don't want you to see. I'm not perfect, but I want you to see everything because I know how important this hire is. I know how important leadership is. I know how important leadership continuity is. I want you to know everything you possibly can about me because I know I'm the right fit for this job. And when I hire people, all those other data indicators matter, but past performance is the best predictor of future success. And when I look at what it takes to be the Wayzata superintendent, I am confident we will achieve success together. Thank you. Sheila, I don't know how long I have on one second. In the interest of time, Dr. Wargin, I have 3 minutes, so to be fair, let's do this. You ask one question, one maybe two, depending on how quickly you answer them, and then leave a minute or so for board members to ask a follow-up question, at least one of them. So, is that fair? Yeah, that's great. Thank you. So, you touched on achievement there at the end. Um if I could provide for you on a one-page dashboard of what success looks like for the district and to know that the district is performing at a high level, what would you have on there? So, the community answered many of your questions last week. I'm going to give the opportunity to the remaining board members who have not done those. So, if you would like to answer that question, anybody? Yeah, go ahead. I look at collaborations with other organizations. Mhm. For me, it would be hearing from our students and getting feedback of what their experiences are in the buildings. >> Mhm. daily experience for each and every student. Um for me, it would be increasing academic achievement in all groups, really reaching that each and every. Yeah, absolutely. What I love about your responses is they're they go hand in hand. I mean, I see continuity in in what you're thinking about is having a great experience for each and every student leads to great achievement for each and every student, and you really can't untether the two. So, I appreciate that. I do have I know you have my packet, but I have one final handout where that really shows how my experiences and values are a direct match to your candidate profile. So, if it's okay, I'm going to approach table and hand these out. >> Can we Can we go around and see if anybody has a follow-up question? Okay. >> I have a question. Can I get asked one? You go ahead. So, in reference to question two, Mhm. Can I find that? So, >> Yeah. later. >> Um it was um well, it was on question in your presentation. Yes. Oh, yeah. >> Um you used the term leaders quite a bit. Mhm. Tell me more about Clarify for me as what you mean by leaders. I have a very broad conception of leadership. Um leadership that has really close connection to student achievement is our teacher leaders, as well as our site leaders, and through our district leaders, and through all the way up through um uh district executive leadership and and board leadership. I've also spent considerable time developing student leaders, and student voice is a is a hallmark of of my leadership. But as I think about um the multiplier effect and how I can cascade my impact, it is working with leadership teams and placing people in um in roles that allows them to uh I think about trying to get back to your question. Um when we think about who I have direct influence for, and then who they have direct influence for, making sure that the people I have direct influence with know exactly what good leadership looks like with the people they have good direct influence with, and that they have direct influence with. Now, in when I've talked about the scope and the scale of um Wayzata and districts of similar scope and scale, there are these layers, and there's an expectation that the superintendent works directly with principals, and that the superintendent works directly with teachers, and knows people, and is visible, and knows that. Maybe isn't directly leading professional development for teachers and things like that, but there isn't multiple layers between leadership and learning. So, when I talked about multiplying the impact there, that's important because that's how we're structured, and that's how we are efficient with our time, but that doesn't mean there's a distance between me and the people we serve. Thank you. Okay, I will quick question if I could get a quick answer for that. Um This would apply to all the questions, but I think it's more more so with the first question that you answered with your presentation. Mhm. In all the other questions as well, you mentioned repeatedly that this is a great school district. This would be a one that would that would be you know, you would just come in and Mhm. take over and you know, continue the momentum. I believe, and I I'm assuming you believe as well, it's we are not 100% perfect. Mhm. So, what are the two top priorities that you will address so when you hit the ground running? Just mention those. I do not need an explanation. Yeah. Be it achievement disparities and program access, and achievement disparities in foundational skills. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. So, thank you, Dr. Wargin, um for joining us this morning. MSBA will be in contact with you following our board's deliberations later today, and we appreciate your interest in becoming our next superintendent, and good luck to you. All right. Thank you, Dr. Soni. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Great to meet you all. Thank you all. Thank you. >> Okay.